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Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

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Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#191
post #74

This is a money grab with the polish of a pro-gamer cheat-cleanup. Why do I say that? Microsoft can fix most of the 'cheats' that a software controller can implement in software. Auto-fire is trivial to detect, as is a KBM setup where it doesn't belong. Out of the ordinary joystick characteristics/speed/hysteresis/range would make it obvious to them which controllers are aftermarket if they cared to disallow them aft…

OK, maybe I'm biased here as a PC gamer who frequently uses a controller... but why not just allow both? Some games like Gears of War on Xbox already do this. Others, like Fortnite, offer crossplay and just show a symbol over each player's head. Do mouse and keyboard players have an advantage? Sure. So do players with bigger TVs or Series X graphics or less worn controllers or the Elite controller. Big deal? The PC e…

"Why purposefully handicap your player base instead of letting them use whatever they want?"

Failing to do so creates a pay-to-win situation.

Now, you might be thinking, companies obviously have no problem with a pay-to-win situation. But you see, there is a critical difference; the companies want you to pay them to win. Paying a third-party, unapproved, unlicensed hardware manufacturer results in $0 dollars going to Microsoft for your pay-to-win experience, and that is just unacceptable.

That's the first-order answer. There's a second-order answer too, which is that even in a pay-to-win situation the company still needs enough control to put up a competent and plausible cover over the pay-to-win mechanics; imagine a game that is literally pay to win, that is, the only input to the "game" (such as it is) is literally how much you paid for it. This obviously wouldn't last long, the best they could hope for is a income trajectory that looks like the I Am Rich app [1], and with even modest cleverness a company can milk a pay-to-win situation much longer than that. And on this level too, there's a problem for Microsoft. The pay-to-win situation is extremely poorly tuned for retention of either the payers or the non-payers; the hardware maxes out the winningness pretty quickly for not much money and doesn't give Microsoft any opportunity to manipulate the non-payer's experience, creating a very hostile environment for players giving Microsoft more money.

You can add more detail to the model in a third-order analysis that considers the player's reactions to the manipulations of the software companies to avoid the negative effects of a simplistic pay-to-win model and the player reactions to the cheaters, and start modeling changes-over-time more explicitly, and it's not hard to see how having pay-to-win cheaters out of the control of Microsoft causes both Microsoft and the non-cheating players a lot of problems too.

I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader, but I will give you the hint that if you draw it out far enough it becomes clear that it's actually a very difficult situation in the limit. As others mention, the hardware hackers can just move up a layer in the stack and resume their work. You'll discover this is not a place where there's a "solution", but that it's intrinsically an arms race, which is why this problem still hasn't been "solved", in either direction by the cheaters or the game devs, even after decades of work by both of them.

(The software fixes proposed elsewhere are not a solution, only another step in the arms race. A good step, and possibly a step worth taking, but only a step. It does at least pull down the skill ceiling you can buy access to, to the point a human might at least hope to stand a chance, but the risk of blocking a top-end player, which is also a player than can cause a PR stink on YouTube, rises steadily as you ratchet down the detection threshold.)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#192
post #74

This is a money grab with the polish of a pro-gamer cheat-cleanup. Why do I say that? Microsoft can fix most of the 'cheats' that a software controller can implement in software. Auto-fire is trivial to detect, as is a KBM setup where it doesn't belong. Out of the ordinary joystick characteristics/speed/hysteresis/range would make it obvious to them which controllers are aftermarket if they cared to disallow them aft…

If this is really about cheating then the notice won’t appear for single player games.

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#193
Thinley veiled attempt to extract money from sales of third-party peripherals. This would be trivial for manufacturers of cheat hardware to work around. All they have to do is modify first-party hardware. Only difference is now MS profits from it.

Cheaters are scum but as someone who doesn't play many competitive games, I'm sick of being forced to make sacrifices to help deal with them.

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#194
post #161
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s always fun to see that viewpoint run face-first into real life, as it inevitably and immediately devolves into a cesspool of cheating that either drives everyone off the platform or loops back around to being forced to run anti-cheat software you don’t have power over. These vapid comments about freedom And abstract notions of ownership always strike me as naively and comically libertarian

"Won't someone please think of the children^W cheaters?" This argument is preposterous. If you want to solve multiplayer game cheating, there's no solution other than to make your game fully server-based and stream a video feed to the client. Meanwhile, these draconian anti-multiplayer-cheating methods obliterate single-player-game freedoms by removing all potential for modding, which is the only good thing about the…

> If you want to solve multiplayer game cheating, there's no solution other than to make your game fully server-based and stream a video feed to the client

Yep, but that would result in no games being commercially viable, and so no games existing.

So there needs to be a compromise in order for those games to exist.

It you want to play a mod friendly game, then… go play one? Lots exist.

Or invent a way to allow anyone to modify and run their game clients in any way they want to preserve abstract notions of freedom whilst also preventing them from modifying and running their game clients in a way that hurts the experience of others.

Good luck!

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#195
post #68

This is one reason the Steam Deck model of being an open console system is the future. Some dinosaurs wants to preserve the old locked-down console experience, where you have exclusive games, controllers and digital stores. But its just worse for the customer in every way.

The day Valve falls, for whatever reason (greed, incompetence, some impossible to predict market shift/tech innovation... Gabe doesn't have decades and decades left as CEO after all) - the open world of PC gaming as we know it will probably fall, to be devoured by the Microsoft/Epic/Ubisoft/etc of the world. Compared to most other tech/gaming companies, it's shocking how non predatory and customer friendly they are.…

> Compared to most other tech/gaming companies, it's shocking how non predatory and customer friendly they are.

That is a low bar indeed. Steam got its initial install base because Valve bought Counter-Strike and then made Steam a functional requirement to play it.

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#196
post #68

This is one reason the Steam Deck model of being an open console system is the future. Some dinosaurs wants to preserve the old locked-down console experience, where you have exclusive games, controllers and digital stores. But its just worse for the customer in every way.

A gaming device controller by Microsoft is nothing different from a gaming device controller by Valve.

The difference is that Valve allows you to use a gaming device from anyone.

And even if they wanted to block you, that wouldn't really work as you can either go around it (via the power of Linux) or just install Windows and make it work that way.

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is a lot of games give controllers aim-assist, and using one of these devices means the game still sees your input device as a controller so you get that aim-assist but you also get the benefits of using a mouse.

Real problem here seems to be games doing aim assist in multiplayer

I'm competitive. I simply won't play FPS that have aim assist in multiplayer. If a controller has a disadvantage to KBM, they should learn to use KBM, not give them a built-in aimbot.

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#198

> players have been encountering error “0x82d60002” OT: Microsoft should be banned by decree from showing naked error codes to people, I've been fighting them for decades now

No. The exact opposite. I'm sick of modern software telling me "something went wrong, try again later". Unless every possible error scenario gets its own descriptive error, that error code is a necessity. And nobody is going to accept a dev adding error messages to every possible error, because localisation to 180+ languages will cost a fortune. Your choice is between "something went wrong" and "something went wrong…

that's not the exact opposite though, is it? what you want is what the parent commenter wants with an addendum

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are most definitely doing this to combat cheaters. I tried out Cronus + KBM on my friend's Xbox S and it was comical. I had aim assist, no recoil and a keyboard and mouse. I was running 100:3 K:D on COD:MW2. If you don't think cheating is a big part of the reason you've never played console games competitively.

That's the problem though: pampering to competitive gamers ruins the experience for the vast majority of people, who just want to, you know, enjoy a game . Unfortunately, competitive gamers are the only ones that matter - they're the cash cows of this part of the industry, which now focuses on creating as many such players as they can, and milking them for all they're worth. Consider how cheating was handled back bef…

To add:

If you buy a game and receive only a client without a server, you only bought half a game. Expect to rent the other half.

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